Serge Schmemann, "Finding Paydirt on This Rock",
New York Times, November 16, 1997, Week in Review Section, pg. 16.

Jerusalem -- The caretaker of a parking lot on the Hebron Road needed
water to wash his trucks, so he ran an underground pipe through an adjacent
olive grove to the nearest tap. That soon brought the Israel Antiquities
Authority. In an area where you can't poke into the ground without disturbing
some shard of ages past, no digging can be done without a preliminary check
by the agency.

Two yards down, archeologists came upon fine Byzantine osaic floors.
The dig uncovered the shape of an octagonal church centered on a large,
flat rock. Last week, two months after they began, the archeologists grandly
announced they had discovered the site of the church at the Kathisma, Greek
for "seat," the stone early Christians had venerated because
of the tradition that the Virgin Mary rested there on her way to Bethlehem
to give birth to Jesus Christ.

The Kathisma became a way station for pilgrims taking the Hebron Road
to Bethlehem. In the 5th century, a devout and wealthy Greek woman named
Ikelia donated funds for a church on the spot, and a monastery arose narby.
The floors found last month included a well-preserved rendering of a palm
tree in rich yellows and greens, which are unusual colors for the period,
according to Rina Avner and Yuval Baruch, the archeologists who led the
excavation. The octagonal shape itself was uncommon for the Holy Land,
prompting the experts to speculate that it might have served as the inspiration
for the Dome of the Rock, the magnificent octagonal shrine raised by theUmayyad
caliphs over the rock from which the Prophet Muhammed dreamed to ascending
to heaven. By the 12th century pilgrims reported that the church was gone.

A Problem of Funds

So after identifying the Kathisma, the archeologists prepared to rebury
it. The problem was not ideology or religious sensitivity or lack of interest.
On the contrary, Ms. Avner spoke with escitement about how she suspected
that the site was the Kathisma in 1993 while researching a corner of it
in advance of the widening of the Hebron Road.

The problem was simply money.

In a land where civilizations and religions have thrived and struggled
for four millennia, the earth is so richly layered in artifacts, buildings
and bones that archeology often seems less a science than a frantic race
against road-building and construction (the Kathisma site was being considered
for a service station).

"About 90 percent of all excavations in Israel are not research
oriented," said Raphael Greenberg, an archeologist with the Antiquities
Authority. "They're salvage operations." Israeli law
requires anyone doing any excavation to coordinate it with the Antiquities
Authority, and if anything ancient turns up, the work is supposed to stop
until archeologists investigate. But there is little Government money for
extensive digs; most comes from universities or foundations.

Contractors, who resent the stoppages, press for work to resume as soon
as possible. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who consider any disturbance of Jewish
bones to be a violation of Jewish law, are another constant obstacle. They
battle fierceley - sometimes violently - if they suspect anyone is digging
up a burial site. When archeologists mistakenly believed that they
had found a burial site of the ancient Hasmoneans in November 1995, thousands
of ultra-Orthodox Jews staged a demonstration in which they put a ritual
curse on the Minister of Education, who oversees archeology, that his hand
might wither if he carried on.

Even with all these obstacles, Mr. Greenberg said, there are between
200 and 300 excavations every year, "more than anyone can really digest."

The Kathisma church is fortunate. There are no Jewish bones for the
ultra-Orthodox to defend, no contractors losing money. There is also full
support from the landowner, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, the descendant
of the ancient Byzantine church and owner of the nearby St. Elias
Monastery and its olive groves.

Metropolitan Timothy of the Greek Patriarchate proudly noted that the
discovery confirmed the ancient tradition of the church: the Patriarch
always stops to rest at St. Elias on his annual Christmas visit to Bethlehem.
"This excavation supports our tradition and our presence here, and
how faithfully we have kept them," he said.

None of that would have saved the Kathisma from reburial had money not
ben found. The Minister of Tourism, Moshe Katsav, was persuaded that with
the approach of 2000, the year in which millions of pilgrims and tourists
are expected in the Holy Land, the Kathisma could provide a powerful added
attraction.

Thus it came to pass in a time of great strife in the Holy Land that
the past arose from the ashes of time and brought together the forces of
science, religion and government to chalk up a fleeting victory against
the present. Only the old gnarled olive trees would have to go - and the
trucks would remain unwashed.